Jehan Daruvala to move up to Formula Renault

Indian karting champion Jehan Daruvala will move up from karting to single seater Formula Renault championship

The former Indian karting champion Jehan Daruvala will move up from karting to single seater formula Renault championship. He will start his season of racing with the Formula Renault 2.0 ALPS and NEC from next year. The young driver will be testing with different teams before the end of this year. One of these teams will be Fortec Motorsports which participates in other championships like Formula 3 as well. He has already finished a two day test of Formula Renault car to get the hang of it. Obviously the handling and braking characteristics of these cars are very different from that of a kart and this will take a while getting used to.

Jehan Daruvala said that by the end of test, he found himself getting used to the dynamics of a formula Renault car. His switch to this championship comes after three successful karting seasons in Europe. During these seasons he won different titles and also attained many podiums. As he moves up his career ladder, he will be backed by Sahara Force India team. The Sahara Force India F1 team scouted him through their ‘One in a billion’ program.

This year Jehan Daruvala was the runner up with an 11 point difference in 2014 DKM championship, karting championship in Germany. A single file restart of the race killed his advantage in the race putting him at the second spot in the championship. He finished third in the CIK FIA championship which is an international karting event. This is the highest any Indian driver has ever stood in an international karting championship. It was initially planned that Jehan Daruvala will continue in the karting category in Europe but he exceeded the targets that were set for him in the first season itself. So the team and the driver decided that they should move up to face a tougher challenge.

As we said already, a decision on the team hasn’t been made yet and he will test with different teams to decide on one of them. A decision about the team will be made by the end of this year. The initial two day testing was just about him getting used to a single seater racer and how to put it through its paces on the tarmac after warming it up. He was able to beat the benchmark time set for him by eight tenth of a second which indicates that he was easily able to adapt to the single seater racer.

During the month of November, Jehan Daruvala will be involved in more testing with the Formula Renault car so that he gets better used to the dynamics of the car, specially the brakes as he himself said and also the down force which takes a while getting used to. For this, Jehan will be putting in 15-20 days of testing in the car. To be in top shape for the 2015 season, he is also planning to work with Gerry Convy. Gerry is the Formula 1 driver Paul di Resta’s fitness coach. He is also planning to work with Don MacPherson who is a renowned mental coach.